


Emergency Stop

by monimala



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Gap Filler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 21:18:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12779718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monimala/pseuds/monimala
Summary: A filler fic/alternate take on the elevator scene in 1.10.Maybe this is their only shot.





	Emergency Stop

She hits the button and when the car grinds to a halt, they go off kilter. Shoved by gravity and exhaustion and fate. Lurching together. Close. So close. Enough to taste each other's blood and sweat and smell the soot and gunpowder on each other's skin. A kiss would be easy. A kiss would be brutal. She wants it so bad. He needs it even worse. Maybe this is their only shot. There are a dozen cops and feds outside the elevator waiting to take him in and scores to settle, and he could die in an hour, a day, a week. Their foreheads touch. He breathes her in. She clutches at his chest, his hips, all the places that ache from wounds he doesn't let heal.

"Frank..." she whispers, pleads.

And it hurts. Like a bullet. Like an arrow. Like a fist to the chest. 

He's still a married man, goddammit. It doesn't matter that Maria's gone, she's not _really_ gone. And in fourteen years he's never even looked at another woman. _"Really? There's no one on your List? Because I'd throw you over for Brad Pitt in a minute. Hugh Jackman, too." "Baby, my list only has one name on it. Yours."_ Until now. Until this. That piece of shit messed up kid holding a gun to Karen's head. The explosion tearing apart the kitchen. This goddamn freight elevator that is so full of heaven and hell.

"I can't," he gasps out. "I can't."

But he does. He goes in. He takes her face in his hands and he memorizes how soft her cheeks are under his thumbs. He'll remember until his last breath how her eyes go wide, how her lips part for him. How she tastes like copper and smoke and adrenaline. Fuck. She's not his wife. She's nothing like his wife. Not gentle, not sweet. Not patient and funny and forgiving. Karen Page is blonde and brittle and bitchy and ballsy. He'll never, ever, mistake her for Maria. But she might be the only person left on the planet who loves him the same way. Who loves him at all. So Frank takes the goddamn kiss. He owns the betrayal of his vows, of his heart, of his kids. He adds it to the stack of sins already on his soul. Then he says goodbye. Goodbye and "I'm sorry," and "take care of yourself."

"Frank, this is wrong. This is all so wrong." She shakes her head, furious and frustrated tears streaming down her cheeks. He wants to lick each one, to shove her back against the wall and get beneath her skirt and bury himself inside her like it might save him. Instead he puts her gun back in her hands. Like he's saying, "Hold onto this, because you sure as shit can't hold onto me." And then he scrambles up and out of the elevator and into the shaft without glancing back.

She'll be okay. She'll survive. He's the one who's got nowhere to go but down. A hundred-story drop with the Devil at the end of it.

He could die in an hour, a day, a week. He doesn't intend to go easy.

 

\--end--


End file.
